Rick Roth makes career change after accident

DAVIDSVILLE - — Rick Roth woke up from an outpatient surgery completely blind and thought his life was over.

"I was devastated," he said. "I cried. I was angered."

But his ordeal allowed him to see the world in a new light. He discovered a sixth sense and developed his new, keener sense of touch to help others as a massage therapist.

His life changed unexpectedly when he went into work at a train car axle mill in 2001. He fell about 6 feet from a steel pile and injured his head, neck and back.

Doctors fused his neck together and screwed in plates. He went back to his everyday life and realized there was a problem when his hands started going numb. He went back to the doctor in January 2002 for a routine, four-hour, outpatient surgery.

The surgery took 11 hours. He was kept face down for the entire surgery, he said, and lost blood and oxygen in the optic nerve.

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Doctors put him on a ventilator and gave him sedatives. Three days later, he awoke to a nightmare.

"I woke up totally blind," he said. "I thought they still had my eyes taped shut."

Doctors sent Roth to the Crichton Rehabilitation Center for 22 days and told him he needed to go to blind school. At first, he refused.

"I said, 'No, I'm not going to no school. I'll get through this on my own,'" he said.

A hospital worker told him she wouldn't leave until he agreed to at least look at the school. He conceded.

The school taught him the basics of living independently over six months. He learned to read Braille and how to shave, dress and cook.

He said he knew how to cook before he was blind, but even eating became a challenge.

"Close your eyes when you try to eat one night," he said. "It's very difficult."

The blind school workers taught him to eat spaghetti on the first night.

"I had more on my shirt than I did in my mouth," he said.

Soon, the techniques he learned allowed him to cook for himself. He uses a talking watch as a timer and a wooden spoon to measure water in a pot.

He said he cooks all of his own meals. Many he makes in a slow cooker. But he also bakes and has perfected his hamburger technique.

During the last week of blind school, he lived in an apartment on his own. He moved out of the school and did the same.

"When I got home, I couldn't just sit around and do nothing," he said.

His mobility instructor suggested he try massage therapy, so he enrolled in Laurel Highlands Therapeutic Academy. He started his own business, Out of Sight Therapeutic Massage, at his home in Davidsville.

"With being blind, my sense of touch has really increased," he said. "I can feel trigger points, knots in the body."

He is licensed in Pennsylvania and specializes in work on the sciatic nerve. He is certified in Swedish massage, hot stone massage, fibromyalgia techniques, pregnancy massage, myofascial release and hospice care, he said.

Continuing education classes teach him new techniques, including massage for migraines.